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Need electric fence help!

The farmette I'm leasing has no grass in the paddocks where my boys are. There is a bit of the green stuff 'on the other side' that is quite enticing! Owners have what looks like a nice electric fence & I have made repairs and am ready to fire it up. It hasn't been used in a few years & everything is disconnected.

I'm used to a single plug & play, but this is more elaborate with what appear to be connect/disconnect 'arms' for each paddock. I have a picture on my phone and will try to post it soon. I seem to recall a discussion that described something similar. Can anyone help me hook it up before my beasts push the fence over? Please!

They're no help. They suggested I keep the horses in the barn if I didn't like the fence - and so, I'm fixing their fence.
I'd try the disconnects, but instead of just unplugging the charger, they unhooked EVERY wire! All the wires between the charger & disconnects are just hanging & I can't tell what goes where.

Now, if you'd posted a picture like you said you were going to, *ahem*, I could have gone outside and looked at the four chargers we have, two solar a zeb whatever and an antique weedburner and maybe even taken a pic to post and twisted my DD's arm to get it uploaded so you could see it. But . . .

Fence electricity is simple.
1: make sure the ground wire is connected to the ground rod/s
2: follow the hot wire to the fence. walk the fence and make sure nothing metal or vegatative is touching it. If the fence wire goes in two/ or more directions. pick one and follow it. Return to the connection point and follow the next fence wire. Each time look for anything that touches it.

Fence electricity is simple.
1: make sure the ground wire is connected to the ground rod/s
2: follow the hot wire to the fence. walk the fence and make sure nothing metal or vegatative is touching it. If the fence wire goes in two/ or more directions. pick one and follow it. Return to the connection point and follow the next fence wire. Each time look for anything that touches it.

That's what I'm used to! This is not so simple.... I'm on my Nook, will post picture in the morning.

In this case the manual should be good help. In the link the guy shows his ground rod and what it looks like, trace that back to the negative pole on the charger. If you have a whole host of disconnects in the way then just take your time, they may have a strange non-standard installation. If they didn't just unplug the charger then who knows how they put the system together, it may never have worked properly. I've seen people use wire nuts for indoor residential wiring to hold stuff together before, not a good idea but the concept is the same, it's a connection. The positive side should be a nice insulated wire traveling from the charger to the fence wires and attached to each fence wire with a spider connector or similar. Possibly somewhere in that nice insulated wire is a disconnect or two, some people like to have one for their lowest wires in case of snow or like the guy in the link, in case he gets behind on his weedeating.

Anyway, let's hope that tracking wires down makes more sense now, good luck.

What was it Larel and Hardy had to say, something about a fine mess? We don't have a Parmak, we have the Red Snapper and a Zareba (I think) and two solar panel jobs that don't work too well. The first thing I would do is find your ground, find the ground wire, and trace it back to somewhere near the charger, so you can reconnect it. Mark that. Then start searching for however they had connected the hot leads to the actual fence and mark those. I see a yellow romex wire coming out of the wall - some random wire just going from staple to staple - random wires poking out of the knife switches and then some grey romex traveling up the wall and then sort of hanging there in the middle underneath the knife switches. I also see what I hope is the power supply to the charger coming out of the right hand side and heading off down the wall. Anyway, I have a suspicion that they didn't have enough wire to get to where they needed to go so scabbed in some little jumper wires. Take those random wires out for the moment, you may need them again later but they are just ugly and in the way.The yellow and the grey are probably your ground and the hot lead, now you need to trace them and make sure, then hook them up to the appropriate terminal on the charger. You don't have to have the knife switch but it makes the fence more useable. We have two knife switches so we can cut off one or the other side of the fence, or both, without pulling the plug on the charger and killing the whole thing.

Good luck, I look at ours every day to check the pulse light and still would have to scratch my head to stick it all back together if it got all disconnected like that. DH not so much, but he put it together, I helped but sitting outside cutting wires to length isn't always that educational.

One other thing. Romex is made with three wires, two insulated and the ground and the insulated wire they sell for electric fences is one wire. At least that's how I remember it.
If that's romex and they used it as the hot and ground leads you've got to figure out which of the wires they are using, did they try to use all three? Are they just using one and leaving the others as artifacts? If they hooked up the black one to the fence and the white one to the charger, using their romex "hot lead", well it ain't never going to work like that. Pick one.

Find out what that yellow and grey stuff is and what it does, is connected to etc. And unplug the charger.

Okay... Looked at your pic. It's a relatively easy fix. They have used house wire for high voltage. That's the only major fail. The knife switches allow the choice of two different fence circuits.The wire choice is important because house wire is rated to 600 volts. The charger puts out about 7000 volts. If the wire is laying on the ground or next to something metal, the voltage can jump to it. High voltage wire will keep the voltage from shorting out.

1. Determine which wire is used as a ground or connect to a wire to a driven ground rod. This is connected to the lower terminal .

2. Are you going to keep using the switches to select fence circuit? Otherwise, just replace the house wire with insulated fence wire. Or make sure the existing wire is not close to any metal as it runs in the building.This wire is connected to the top terminal (terminal with the white insulator)

Hosspuller's right, to make their fence so it will work properly you need to just ignore or throw away the romex and replace it with the right stuff. Let's hope the rest of their installation is done correctly.

hosspuller, you confirmed my suspicion that the current setup is probably dangerous. Electricity isn't my thing, but it didn't look right and we had to replace the line to the barn & add lights already.
I don't think keeping the current setup away from metal as it comes into the barn is an option. The exterior siding is metal and the charger is uncomfortably close to the washer... <sigh>

Not inherently dangerous regarding the high voltage wire. Just uncomfortable if you were to touch anywhere close and be grounded. Remember the point of the charger is to safely "shock" the horses. It will sting but not permanently damage you or a horse. The charger could be next to the washer. Just use the insulated fence wire for any connection from the white insulator terminal on the charger and you'll be right.

If the fence still won't work after you've replaced the hot lead and hooked all that up, then they may have made other errors in their connections. I have heard of people stapling electric wire to wooden posts and thinking that was OK, and I've seen pictures of connections made with standard household wire nuts, which don't work so well for a bunch of reasons, the ground may not be adequate and then there just might be a few too many blades of grass or objects touching the fencewires. Just walk the fenceline and *listen*, in the dark you can sometimes see a short too.

It looks like for the "hot" wire, they're using bare or low voltage rated wire going through wood. If that's the case, it could start a fire. The proper wire is termed "insulated lead-out wire", and is typically rated around 20,000 Volts

“There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by the sword. The other is by debt.”
John Adams

I'm thinking a lot of it needs to be replaced. Along the long side of the barn, about 1/4 of the romex is buried, the rest is just on the ground against the wall then runs exposed up the side and thru the wall. As if that's not enough, I'm not sure the charger is even 'putting out' ;-)

On the ground or underneath doesn't matter. It's insulated, it can't short, it's just a matter of having it look workmanlike and be accessible and buried properly in areas where it could be a trip and fall hazard for safety. Of course you want it to be buried where you are using it to jump gates.

But do change out the romex house wire for the proper insulated single wire.

I'm afraid I don't know how to test a charger to see if it's defective, not without getting a shock, so probably a meter is next on the shopping list.

Look, I'm really sorry that they have this nice looking POS fence with all these hidden problems. I have a suspicion the thing NEVER worked and that's why they are stonewalling you in regards helping you make it work, they don't know how themselves. It wasn't until we went to put up an electric fence for the horses that I began to pay attention to how easy yet complex they are.